Russian Roulet
by Ho.ku.o.u.FAIBU
Summary: A story based off of: Alex Rider: Russian Roulette, By Anthony Horowitz. Ivan Braginski has had a hard time living on the streets and decides to turn to theft to keep himself fed. Everything seems to be going well for Ivan until he has an unfortunate run in with Lars Morgens (Netherlands) during one of his feeding frenzies.


I had been watching the woman's house on and off for almost a month now... It may sound wrong but what was I to do? I was hungry and I knew she would not miss a little food here and there, she was defiantly able to afford more than what she could eat on her own.

From what I had learned she was an actress who lived on the forth floor in a well off apartment complex. The person who designed it was either mad or brilliant. There were beautiful carvings in and on the walls that my mind had already began to twist to my advantage. ...All I needed now was an opening.

I knew there was a small window that she liked to leave open when the weather was nice.. or when she burned something that smelled like waffles, usually the latter.

After a while I slowly started to learn her routine and was able to climb into her apartment unnoticed since the brick was almost the same color as my coat.

But one night that changed.. I must have been getting to greedy but it was impossible for me to notice at the time. The first sign that I should have stopped stealing from her was the fact that I had started to have trouble fitting through the window since I was no longer starved enough to fit.

On this night I had managed to get myself stuck about half way through the window. It must have taken longer than I thought to crawl through though I did not care at the time. My mind was to busy focusing on the fact that I could have broke my nose when I finally wriggled free of the window and landed on my face.

I stumbled a bit in the half darkness to the fridge and opened it as usual. If my thoughts would have been clearer I would have realized that the noise that I had heard did not come from a bottle being jostled by me opening the door but rather someone else preparing to open a different door. I reached into the fridge and stuffed my face with little bits of food that I knew would not be missed before closing the door.

A man with spiked blond hair and a pipe stood staring at me. I saw his green eyes turn instantly from surprised to understanding before flashing to a black seething fury. He was a huge man, solid and well built with a sense of power about him. Without knowing anything about him, I knew I was in terrible trouble.

"What is it Lars?" The woman I had been watching was standing in the hallway behind him. "There's someone in the apartment," He said, "A boy." He could easily tell that I did not belong to the woman by just looking at me. His eyes briefly left me, darting across the room to the window. He did not need to ask any questions, he knew how I got in, and that I was alone.

"Do you want me to call the police?" The woman asked. "No. There is no need for that." His words were measured, uttered with a sort of dull certainty. And they told me the worst thing possible. If he was not calling the police, it was because he had decided to deal with me himself and he was not going to shake my hand and thank me for coming. He was going to kill me.

Perhaps there was a gun in his coat pocket or he planned to tear me apart with his bare hands, which at the time I had no doubt he could. I did not know how to react. My one desire was to get out of the apartment, back onto the street. I tried to clear my thoughts. All I had to do was get past the man and out the corridor, the woman would not try to stop me.

I looked around and did perhaps the stupidest thing I could. There was a steak knife on the counter. I picked it up. The man did not move or speak but he glanced at the knife with outrage. How could a child dare to pick up _his _property and threaten him in _his _home!? That is what he said without actually speaking.

Holding the knife had the opposite affect I thought it would. It did not make me feel any stronger and only served to irritate the man further. "_I don't want any trouble__.._" Even though I had reverted back to Russian I hopped he could understand. "_J-just let me go and no one will get hurt, Da?_"

He had no intention of doing that. He moved toward me and I jabbed out with the knife without thinking, not meaning to stab him, not really knowing what I was stopped. I saw the woman froze in shock. The man looked down. I followed his eyes and saw that the point of the blade had gone though his coat, into his abdomen.

I stepped back and let go of the knife frightened. Both the knife and the man's pipe fell to the floor with a clatter. The man did not seem to have felt any pain but he seemed surprised. He slowly and carefully examined the gash in his coat. When he brought his hand away there was blood on the tips of his glove.

He gazed at me. I was unarmed now, trapped by those horrible eyes. "What have you done?" He demanded, making his condition seem worse than it really was at first, "This coat wasn't cheep." I did not know what to say.

He quickly took advantage of my confusion and punched me in the face. I did not know it was possible for a human to hit so hard. I felt my cheekbone strain and almost break from the force. I heard the woman scream in fright and staggered back before being struck again by the man's other fist. That was the last thing I saw. I was unconscious before I hit the ground.

I woke up in total darkness, lying in a cramped space with my legs bunched up, a gag in my mouth, and my hands tied. My first thought was that I was locked inside a box, that I had been buried alive and for the next sixty seconds I screamed without making any sound. My heart raced as my muscles strained against the cord around my wrists.

Once I started to quiet down I noticed the sound of an engine and slowly began to realize I was in the trunk of a car, not a box. I had been allowed to live, but for how long until the man tried to kill me was uncertain.

I shifted a bit before wincing in pain. My head hurt, and I could tell that my face had swelled enough for seeing to be difficult due to how hard it was to keep my eyes open.

Eventually the car stopped and I heard the man get out. I scooted away from where the trunk would open as much as I could, expecting him to open it at any moment and drag me out. I must have stayed like that forever. My muscles started to cramp and hurt and I was forced to change positions once I was sure that the trunk lid was not going to suddenly pop open.

I lied on my stomach for a while since my hands were tied behind my back. When I started to realize no one was coming for me I shifted again and tried to get my hands in front of me. I rolled over onto my side and squirmed a bit as I slowly started to move my arms.

I had gotten them to about mid thigh before I started to shiver. The drive to wherever I was must have taken hours since I was out for the majority of it I could not tell. It had been a little past sunset when I had broken into the woman's house. Did that mean it was night time now? I began to think that I was going to be left there all night, like a piece of baggage that nobody needed.

And so it was. I was left in the dark, in silence, with no idea how long it was going to last or what would happen when I was released. It was being done on purpose, to break my spirit and make me suffer. I was the victim of my own worst imaginings. I had nothing to do except to count every single painful minute.

I tried to fight the pain off by sleeping but was only partially successful. When I awoke there was a man leaning over me. He was smaller than the man I had met at the apartment but was still bigger than I was. He had short brown hair with a single curl poking out of the side of his head and green eyes that looked as though they would go ablaze at any moment.

He reached down and pulled me out of the trunk with both hands before leaning me against the car so I would not fall over. He looked at me with hardly any expression apart from disgust. I trembled when I saw him pull out a knife. I expected him to stick it in my back and walk off but he simply cut the ropes off me.

"You're-a coming with us!" A cheerful voice said. I turned and saw another man that looked almost identical to the other but much kinder, and a bit sleepy. At the time I had decided they were twins. The first one seemed irritated by the other, "You-a heard him!" He pushed me lightly to get me to start walking.

The twins lead me to a large mansion surrounded by a fence that looked almost like prison walls. The cheerful one locked up the gate after we entered and I watched as I felt my heart sink. I knew that there was little chance that I would ever see outside again.

I finally looked away from the gate and was taken back by what I saw. The grass inside the fence was emerald green and there were large beds of tulips that circled the mansion in alternating bands. When I went into the mansion I was even more astonished. It was the first time that I had seen something so elegant. There were hundreds of what I thought were frozen tear drops hanging and glistening from what I would later learn was called a chandelier.

I was brought to a room with a large oak door that the grumpier twin knocked on before peaking inside. "Go in." He said as he opened the door the rest of the way. I stepped in reluctantly and jumped a little when I heard the door close.

The man that I had met the night before was sitting at his desk, putting away a clump of something green. Once he had closed the drawer I noticed some of the same green stuff was in his pipe. I also noticed that there was a gun on the desk in front of him. I stared at it as I waited for something to happen.

"Sit down." The man lit his pipe. I walked over quietly and sat down in the chair across the desk from him. "What's your name?" He asked as he puffed on his pipe. "Iva-" I cut myself off. The long 'a' sound in my name was to painful to say since I had been punched in the face twice.

"Iva?" He seemed slightly confused since I gave him a girly sounding name. I did not correct him though. I had decided it would be better not to say anything unless I needed to. "How old are you?" He asked. I moved slowly and lifted my hands up to where he could see them. My English was very poor at this point in my life and the only way I could answer him was by holding up all of my fingers to let him know I was ten.

His eyes glanced at my fingers lethargically, "Where you from?" "Russia." I said one of the few words I actually knew in English. "Long way from home aren't ya?" He asked sitting up some. "Da." I trembled a bit when I saw his eyes narrow, "...Sir."

He sat back in his chair once I added the second part, "You have parents?" "Nyet sir." I shook my head 'no'. "And last night when, you broke into the apartment, were you alone?" He sat back up once again, seeming to have trouble focusing. I nodded. "How did you come to choose that apartment? As opposed to any other?" He asked. "Food." I tapped my nose, pretending that I had chosen the apartment because I smelled food coming from it rather than staking it out.

My answer seemed to satisfy him. He took the pipe out of his mouth and set it on the table. I was able to see the initials L.M. on the thin neck of it. He noticed me staring and moved the pipe so I could see better. "Lars Morgens." He said, "That's my name."

I nodded a little and watched him pick the pipe back up. "You must be wondering why you are still alive," He continued, "In truth, you should not be. Carrying a heavy load in the trunk of a car makes it use more gas. Which is expensive mind you. I could have easily thrown you off a bridge. Even now I am still undecided if I will let your thieving life continue or if you will die."

His eyes rested briefly on the revolver. "The fact that you are sitting in this room with me is down to one reason only. Timing, a week ago this would have been different. But right now..." He trailed off and took a long drag on his pipe.

"I'm a careful man," He went on. "One of the reasons I have been so successful is I have always used everything that has been given to me. I never miss an opportunity. It may be an investment in a company, the chance to buy my way into a bank, the weakness of a government official who is open to bribery. Or it may be the chance appearance of a worthless thief like you. If it can be used, then I will use it. That is how I live."

"There is something you need to understand about me. I am extremely successful. Right now the world is changing. The old ways are being left behind. For those of us with the vision to see what is possible, the rewards are limitless. You have nothing. You steal because you are hungry and all you think about is your next pathetic meal. I have the world and everything in it. And now, Iva, I have you.

"A large number of people work for me in this house. Because of the nature of my work and who I am, I have to be careful. Feliciano and Romano, the two men who brought you here, are my personal bodyguards. Right now they are standing outside, and I should perhaps warn you that there is a communication button that I can press if you were to try anything or threaten me again, and they would shoot you down instantly. Be glad they were not with me in the apartment. The moment you picked up that knife your life would have ended.

I will not kill you-yet- because I think I can use you. As it happens, a position has arisen here, a vacancy that would not normally be easy to fill. You are, as I said, very fortunate in timing. I have no doubt that you are stupid and uneducated. But even so you may be acceptable."

He paused and it took me a few seconds to realize he was waiting for me to reply. I did not believe what I was hearing! He was not planning to kill me, he was offering me a job, a way out! "I happy to work sir." I said.

His eyes settled on me, full of contempt despite being clouded by smoke. "Happy?" He repeated the word with a slight sneer. "You say stupid things without thinking. It is not my intention to make you 'happy.' Quiet the opposite. You broke into my apartment. You attempted to hurt me and in doing so almost ruined a perfectly good over coat, jacket, and shirt. You even cut my skin. For this you must pay and be punished.

"If you decided to accept my proposal, you will spend every hour of the rest of your life wishing that the two of us had never met. I am not offering to pay you. I will own you. I will use you. And maybe, many years from now, if you work hard enough, I will let you go. Until then, I will expect your total obedience. You will do whatever I tell you. You will not hesitate."

He puffed smoke in the air looking slightly bored. "What work I do?" I asked. I had no choice, I had to survive. No matter what he wanted me to do there would always be a chance for escape, and I would find it.

"You will clean, carry messages, help in the garden, and such. But that is only part of it. You are a bit young for one of your other purposes but if you live long enough I will have you do that as well. The main reason I need you now is something quiet different." He paused. "You will be my food taster."

"Food?" I blinked confusedly while trying not to laugh. That was it?! That had to have been one of the most ironic punishments ever! And certainly not the worst. "It is unfortunately the case that I have many enemies," Morgens explained. This was not a laughing matter for him or for me as I would later find out.

"Some of them fear me, others are jealous, but all of them would benefit if I was no longer here. And rather than risk harm or discomfort to myself I use a canary. In the last year, there have been three attempts on my life. Outside of my sister and my guards, I can trust no one, and even they may be bought off one day to harm me... I can trust none of them." His bloodshot eyes bored into me, "Can I trust you?"

I was trying to make sense of all this. Was this really to be my fate? Sitting at a table checking foods for potential threats and getting to stuff my face with them? I slowly nodded after a moment. "You'll do whatever I want?" He asked. "I do what you want." English is much easier when all you have to do is rearrange word order rather than think about what you are saying.

"Will you?" He asked, "Anything." "Da..." This time I started to feel a bit uneasy. It was exactly what he had been waiting for. It was the very worse thing I could have said. "We will see." He reached out and picked up the gun off the desk.

He opened the cylinder and showed me it was empty before sliding it to me, "You know how to load a gun right?" I nodded reluctantly. He slid a single bullet next to the gun, "Put this inside one of the chambers and spin the barrel." I trembled a little and did as I was told.

"You say you'll do anything for me? So do this. The gun has six chambers, one containing a bullet. Neither of us know which chamber it is in." He said, "Put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger." I stared at him and lied. "I no understand.." "It's simple enough!" He said becoming slightly irritated, "Point the gun at the back of your mouth and shoot."

"..Why?" I asked dumbly. "Because you said to me five seconds ago that you would do anything I asked you too, and now I'm asking you to prove it. I need to know that I can rely on you. Either you will pull the trigger or you will not. But let us consider the options, Iva. If you will not do what I ask, then you have lied to me and I cannot use you after all. In that case, I can assure you that your death is certain. If you do as I have asked, then there are two possibilities that lie ahead of you.

"It is quite possible that you will kill yourself, that in a few minutes my cleaners will be wiping your brains off my carpet, which would be costly. But there is also a very good chance that you will live, and from that moment on you will serve me. It is your decision and you must make it now. I don't have all day."

He was torturing me after all. He was asking me to play this twisted game to prove beyond any doubt that he had complete power over me. I would never argue with him. I would never refuse his wishes. If I did this, I would be accepting that my own life was no longer mine. That in every respect I was his.

What could I do? What choice did I have? I slowly turned the gun on myself and felt hot tears streaming down my face. It seemed impossible that my life could come to this. "Don't be a baby get on with it." Morgens said as he took a drag from his pipe.

My arm and wrist were aching. I could feel the blood pumping thought my veins. Almost involuntarily, my finger had curled around the trigger. The grip was pressed against the palm of my hand. For a crazy moment, I thought about firing at Morgens, of emptying the chambers in his direction. But what good would that do me?

He probably had a second gun, he had said he was careful, and if I did not find the bullet in the first shot he would have plenty of time to shoot me where I sat. "..Please, sir.." I whispered. "I'm not interested in your tears or pleading, I'm only interested in your obedience." He said.

I touched the muzzle of the gun to the side of my head. "In your mouth." Morgens repeated, puffing smoke and looking slightly irritated again. I will never forget his insistence, that one obscene detail. I carefully pushed the barrel into my mouth little. I could taste the metal when the muzzle scrapped against the roof of my mouth.

I could not breath. It felt as though I was going to throw up. I gently pressed the trigger with my finger but could not get it to move. I closed my eyes tightly and squeezed the trigger. It had felt like entirety passed before I heard the click.

Relief rushed thought me but it did not feel good. It was as if I was being emptied, like everything was being taken away from me. From that moment on I belonged to Morgens. That was what he had demonstrated without as much as laying a finger on me.

I dropped the gun non the desk. It fell heavily with a trunk between us. The muzzle was wet with my saliva still. "You may leave now." Morgens said as he set down his pipe. I stood up. My whole body felt foreign to me. I might not have killed myself, but even so, something inside me had died.

"Iva is working for me now." Morgens continued, "Take him down stairs and show him his room." I turned a bit and saw the twins at the door. I had wondered how long the two of them at been there at first but did not care to ask. The cheerful one seemed a bit frightened of me now, and the grumpy one seemed a little on edge as well.

On the way to my room I glanced out the window. There was a man digging a grave while two others carried a body. I stopped in my tracks and began laughing, " 'A position has arisen here', Da?" The grumpy twin nudged me uneasily and I began walking again, still giggling.

I remained in service to Lars Morgens for almost twelve years. I was poisoned three times, none of them while eating Lars's food. Different cooks had secretly tried to build up my tolerance and failed. When I was twenty an assassin attempted to kill Morgens in his office. If he had not ordered for coffee or if I had taken just a little bit longer to bring it to him the assassin would have succeeded.

I was assigned to handle caring for Lars afterwards. He had lost the ability to move the limbs on his right side and could no longer make facial expressions, not that anyone would have noticed. After two years of caring for the man the perfect moment finally arrived. After a long period of bad business deals Morgens requested to be left alone to rethink his strategies.

After almost a week of him confining himself to his office I took my chance. The last time that he had ordered coffee I left the tray on the floor in the hallway. "Iva where's my coffee?" Lars asked as he glanced up at me from his work. "It in hall." I said as I closed the door and smiled. He looked up at me again with confused eyes that quickly filled with terror. He knew I was going to kill him.

I ran towards him as he reached under his desk to retrieve his gun. He pulled the trigger three times but nothing came out. I quickly put one of my hands over his mouth and pulled him away from his desk so he could not call for Feliciano and Romano to save him. He pulled the trigger two more times before I took the gun away from him.

"I very lucky man, Da?" I said as I held the gun to his temple, " 'The gun has six chambers, one containing a bullet.' And I know which one it's in." Morgens tried to struggle and get away before I pulled the trigger but was unsuccessful. Once the gun went off I quickly placed it into his hand and left the room.

I picked up the coffee tray in the hall and dropped it before running towards the room again and standing in the doorway. I had barely made it there before seeing Romano and Feliciano coming towards the room with their guns drawn.

"Bastard!" Romano yelled as he trained his sights on me. "I was just bringing coffee!" I said innocently as I fell to my knees, shaking a little. Feliciano looked behind me and saw the tray scattered across the floor. He slipped into the office to see what had happened while his brother continued to keep his eyes on me.

"There's no way he could-a shot him Roma..." Feliciano said as he came out of the room and lowered his brother's gun. I was allowed to stand back up and lied to them about how I had heard the shot and dropped the coffee tray when I came to see what happened. When the police came I told them the same. The case was filed as a suicide and never spoken of again.

After Lars Morgens death I was a free man. It felt good to no longer be under him, both figuratively and literally. I stayed at a homeless shelter for a few days afterword as I tried to figure out what to do. I had no education and was in the same situation I had been in twelve years ago. I was old enough to work now but no one would take me, it was as if they could tell what I had been though and wanted nothing to do with me.

It was not long until my thoughts went back to my life in the mansion and an idea occurred to me. Two years ago. I finished the job that had been given to an assassin two years ago. Perhaps I could do it again.

I returned to the mansion the next night. Under the cover of darkness I silently broke into Morgens' old office. I looked around to see if I could find anything that had been kept from the assassination attempt, pictures, documents, anything. Nothing was there. I sighed and dragged my hand across my face tiredly. How could everything be gone?

That is when it hit me. Whoever had hired the assassin wanted no trace of him to remain. And I had just walked in right after clean up. I looked around quickly to make sure I was really the only one in the room before looking around again for anything that could have been missed. Did they miss anything? If they did what am I missing? I sat at the desk and put my head in my hands as I racked my brain for answers.

I leaned back in the chair after a few minutes and sighted again before staring at the desk blankly. There was a light layer of dust over the desk that was undisturbed accept for where I had placed my elbows. It was as if I was the only one who had touched the desk top. My eyes widened as I started to realize I was and there was something that was missed.

Lars had always complained to me about a noise on his phone. He had said it sounded like there was some kind of feed back when he talked and he wanted to me to check the phone for bugs. I told him that I would, but at the time I did not know what a bug was. I had thought he wanted me to check for insects that may have somehow messed up the phone and made it sound funny.

I glanced over at the phone and chuckled over my own past stupidity. I picked up the phone after quieting down and smiled. "Privet. My name is Ivan Braginski, and I am looking for job."


End file.
